Dust collectors remove solid particulate or other contaminants from air. These dust collectors operate by forcing the contaminated air through one or more filters which capture the contaminants. The dust collectors are usually self-cleaning and operate with a minimum of human intervention.
In order to service the dust collectors, however, manual inspection is typically required. The manual inspection is used to determine various operating conditions, such as an obstructed or ruptured filter. These dust collectors may have some systems for providing limited information related to other operating conditions, such as temperature, air flow rate, and differential air pressure across the filters. Also, some of these dust collectors use timed cleaning control or photohelics for invoking the self-cleaning functions. However, these systems do not provide for an integration of many functions in one system.
A need thus exists for an integrated programmable system that can electronically perform multiple diagnostics on a dust collector and in response control the dust collector and provide information related to the diagnostics. A need further exists for an integrated system that can replace, for example, timed cleaning control or photohelics for controlling cleaning functions within the dust collector.